Her love for education bolsters her physical capacity, as at 100 years old Dr Heloise Lewis is still teaching.

The decorated educator, who celebrated her birthday last Saturday, has given years of her life to the education system and, despite being retired, continues to contribute.

She told the Jamaica Observer that she facilitates classes for two primary school students at her St Andrew home — a practice which began after her retirement.

“I had started with somebody from the church and she brought about four others and those were night periods that were kept downstairs. Little by little others came. I taught CAPE (Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination) up to last year. But I just said ‘Lord, let nobody else call me, but these two little girls, the primary ones, they belong to the church, and I am helping,” she stated.

But the name Heloise Lewis is renown for the Caribbean Spanish textbook series she authored – Vamos Amigos – which was used by countless secondary students being taught the foreign language. She also wrote the book Hola Chicos to students at the primary level and was a contributor for the Jamaica Observer’s CXC Lecture Series for Spanish.

For some publications, the centenarian said she worked with Longman Publishers from the United Kingdom and Jamaica.

Despite these achievements, getting into the field of teaching was not easy. With limited career options for girls in her day, Lewis recounted that she had always wanted to be a teacher, but met roadblocks that she eventually overcame.

In fact, after successfully completing her studies at the St Andrew High School for Girls, Lewis sought teaching opportunities but was denied because of her age.

“In those days the exams we took were called the Cambridge, so I got the Cambridge School Certificate. And in the year following, [I]stayed at school and studied for what they called the London Matriculation Exam,” – which at the time was an examination set for girls as, according to Dr Lewis, girls were only allowed to do one year of sixth form, while boys did two and sat the Higher Schools exam.

“So I was at home during the year [19]35 wanting to do nothing but teaching, didn’t want any nursing, any post office. There wasn’t much that girls could do, but whenever I applied for teaching in a secondary school, I was told, yes, but you’re so young, because I was just over 16. Until at last my mother said, “Well you have to go to Shortwood [Teachers’ College],” Dr Lewis noted.

The Clarendon native studied for a year at Shortwood Teachers’ College and finished “with distinction in teaching” and returned to her parish to secure a teaching position to teach at Rock River Primary School between 1937 and 1938.

At 21, she said she got married, in 1938, and moved to Old Harbour to work at the primary school, where her husband taught.

“I went to teach at Excelsior [High School] in 1953, but I didn’t start Spanish then…they did not do it them. I taught there until I got one of what they at the time called the teachers’ scholarships from the Ministry of Education. That was in 1963,” she said as she chronicled her remarkable teaching career.

“I went to The University [of the West Indies] and did three years there, [then] went back to Excelsior, stayed only one year because I got a fellowship to go away to UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles)…that was for one year,” she said. “At the end of that year, instead of going back to Excelsior, I was drafted to go to The University [of the West Indies] to teach in the School of Education; so I was then training teachers from 1965 until I retired in 1982.”

At The UWI, Dr Lewis trained teachers in her speciality — modern languages.

After retirement, the centenarian said she spent some time at home with her husband but was soon back in the teaching arena at Excelsior “to fill in because they were short of teachers”.

“I thought it was for a term, and that lasted for 10 years after I was retired,” she told the Sunday Observer. “And, during the time I was at Excelsior, the university called me back in 1994 for a year, because the person who had succeeded me had gone on leave, so I went back there and taught for a year and went back [again] to Excelsior. I ended Excelsior in 1997.”

“My whole teaching career lasted [from when] I started in 1937 at a primary school in Clarendon…and I would say I ended in 1997. So 60 years of teaching,” the centenarian humbly stated.

In 2004, the educator was awarded the Order of Distinction at the National Honours and Awards Ceremony, for the promoting of Spanish teaching in Jamaica.

But Dr Lewis, who believes she lived a simple, quiet life, also committed some of her time to doing social outreach.

With an affinity for assisting others, Dr Lewis in 2010 received her second national award — Order of Distinction, Commander Class — for her service to the deaf and work with the Jamaica Association for the Deaf, where she served as a board member and played a vital role in creating the curriculum and methodology geared towards mainly teaching the deaf.

She told the Sunday Observer that she also served as a member and president of the Young Women’s Christian Association — a group she joined in 1966 and left in 2014 when she “could no longer manage”.

Dr Lewis also stated that she assisted elderly people in her community.

“I spent so much of my life in social work, because when I left Excelsior eventually in 1997, and I came home, I was up and down with people who needed help, people from the church who needed help… At one time I was dealing with about 10 people,” the philanthropist said.

“I would cook and take to them when they needed, and at one stage it was a regular thing on Saturday for me to do that for three people; I’d make soup. For one, I went to the market for her… gave her the things, come home and make soup for her and her brother,” Dr Lewis continued, pointing out that they had no helper to assist them at the time.

She highlighted that she would often lend a hand to another elderly woman who lived in a nursing home and suffered from arthritis and was bedridden. She said she would visit and “take her to doctor” for her regular checks.

According to Dr Lewis, her “life of giving, giving, giving” is a persona trait she got from her mother who, while the family lived in Colonel’s Ridge, Clarendon, was an ardent social worker throughout the community.

When asked what’s her secret to making it to 100, and what keeps her going, this centenarian, like most, attributed it to God.

Pointing toward her ceiling, Lewis declared: “Up to the day before I was 100 I said to myself you don’t know if you’re going to live to see tomorrow… I said to myself the 100th birthday is just another day, and, left to me alone, all I would have known is that, the day had come and I said ‘praise the Lord’ and the next day comes.”

Dr Lewis also told the Sunday Observer that she no longer eats meat, as her diet consists of purely fish, vegetables and fruits.

Afflicted by hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, and two pinched nerves which were compounded by chikungunya in 2014, Dr Lewis walks with a cane. The centenarian noted that she still “hobbles down the stairs” of her two-storey home to attend church weekly, where she sits in a wheelchair.

The daughter of a minister, Lewis played an integral role in the start of her church —Church of the Ascension (Anglican) – nearby her home in Mona Heights.

“The church was started because there was a gentleman who was a priest and I think he was connected to the church’s school at the university, UTCWI (United Theological College of the West Indies). In some way, he managed to get a group of us who were living here to go over to Jamaica College at night and plan how we’re going to get everybody together,” she stated, noting that the conferring continued for “some months until the church is over there”.

“But where the church is now built, there was a mango tree, the whole area here (Mona) was a mango pasture ,which was called the Hope Agricultural Station, with mango tree, mango, tree, mango tree all over,” the centenarian recounted.

She said the citizens built a cement altar and cemented benches into the earth, where “on Saturday afternoons” she would go to sweep and rake the mango leaves in preparation for church the following day.

The mother of four, who has outlived three of her children and husband, pointed out that her family was intricately involved in the church as her husband acted as the minister’s assistant, her second son an acolyte, and her third son the person responsible for transporting the folding organ that was stored in their home to church.

She said whenever it rained, and they couldn’t have church, there was “a lady who lived on Daisy Avenue who prepared her home for us to use the carport.”

In church, she said she played the organ, led the choir, and served as president of the women’s guild.

Though she did not want a big celebration for her birthday, Dr Lewis admits she enjoyed the many gatherings had to celebrate her life, an indication of what she said is her family and friends’ great love and care for her.